Slashdot Mirror

flood6 writes "Google has launched their service to offer contextual ads via their AdSense program through RSS feeds. The program is currently in Beta but will allow webmasters who offer RSS feeds of their content to include ads in the feeds (which often appear on other websites or through aggregators); someone clicks on the ad, the owner of the feed makes a little scratch."

jgaynor writes "Citing user requests to coalesce its disparate services, Google today released its new personalized homepage service. It allows you to arrange your Gmail, Google News, Google Maps driving directions, weather and a few select news services (including Slashdot) on a single page. Future plans include Universal RSS support. Clearly a shot at existing services like My Yahoo."

jgaynor writes "Citing user requests to coalesce its disparate services, Google today released its new personalized homepage service. It allows you to arrange your Gmail, Google News, Google Maps driving directions, weather and a few select news services (including Slashdot) on a single page. Future plans include Universal RSS support. Clearly a shot at existing services like My Yahoo."

jgaynor writes "Citing user requests to coalesce its disparate services, Google today released its new personalized homepage service. It allows you to arrange your Gmail, Google News, Google Maps driving directions, weather and a few select news services (including Slashdot) on a single page. Future plans include Universal RSS support. Clearly a shot at existing services like My Yahoo."

jgaynor writes "Citing user requests to coalesce its disparate services, Google today released its new personalized homepage service. It allows you to arrange your Gmail, Google News, Google Maps driving directions, weather and a few select news services (including Slashdot) on a single page. Future plans include Universal RSS support. Clearly a shot at existing services like My Yahoo."

jgaynor writes "Citing user requests to coalesce its disparate services, Google today released its new personalized homepage service. It allows you to arrange your Gmail, Google News, Google Maps driving directions, weather and a few select news services (including Slashdot) on a single page. Future plans include Universal RSS support. Clearly a shot at existing services like My Yahoo."

Mike Skweir writes " I was going to take my daughter to the movies this afternoon and I wanted to find out more about the movie 'Kicking & Screaming'... so I Googled it. To my surprise the following response occurred . When I followed the link, it actually gave me several reviews, movie ratings and the ability to search for a theatre in my area." Once you've entered your zip code, it will also tell you what movies are playing in your area.

Mike Skweir writes " I was going to take my daughter to the movies this afternoon and I wanted to find out more about the movie 'Kicking & Screaming'... so I Googled it. To my surprise the following response occurred . When I followed the link, it actually gave me several reviews, movie ratings and the ability to search for a theatre in my area." Once you've entered your zip code, it will also tell you what movies are playing in your area.

robotsrule asks: "Having been in the computer industry a while I distinctly remember the pain of making the 16-bit to 32-bit transition, when Windows made the change to 32-bit support. Any developer who remember the joys of thunking and other kludges that were meant to help code conversions also remembers the arcane marathon debug sessions too. I have not been keeping up with the latest Microsoft Longhorn technical news, or the plans that the Linux community has for 64-bit platform support. Does anyone out there have a reliable prediction for the amount of system shock we are facing when either Longhorn or 64-bit Linux comes out? Will I lose all my favorite 32-bit development tools again as I watch the backward compatibility support dry up as the 64-bit O/S platforms are adopted? Or are the O/S manufacturers making happy noises about long-term support for existing development languages and tools?"

Nintendo President Iwata further discussed the realities of the DS wireless initiative, Gamasutra reports. At the press conference he also revealed that, indeed, the next-generation console will utilize a wireless link-up to connect to the DS. From the article: "One particularly interesting piece of news is that, though Nintendo will not charge for the new online service, other publishers will be able to with relation to particular software titles - an option that is likely to please third-party publishers who may want to launch more complex online-capable RPG games or other information-retrieval services and then charge a monthly fee for them. Iwata makes it clear that any charges will be obviously signposted, however."

diegocgteleline.es writes "Via google news, I found a article at MSNBC claiming that Michael Dell, Dell's founder and chairman, has droped $100M into Red Hat (Michael himself, not his company). Analyists say that "Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat", but one wonders what's behind of this move. A fight against their competence in the server market?"

Eagle5596 writes "It seems that there can be a serious problem with Google's Web Accelerator, and I'm not talking about the privacy concerns. Evidently some people have been finding that due to the prefetching of pages their accounts and data are being deleted."

telstar asks: "Lately, it seems like an almost weekly occurrence: confidential customer data is exposed online, despite the assurance that security measures were in place to prevent such a problem. ChoicePoint Inc., LexisNexis, and DSW Inc. were all victims of online security breaches. Ameritrade and Bank of America both admitted lost physical data tapes containing confidential client account information. Recently, Carnegie Mellon notified 19,000 students, alumni, faculty and staff that their confidential information may have been compromised. An April 2005 GAO report found that though the IRS is making progress fixing security holes in systems that it operates, they aren't keeping pace with new vulnerabilities, risking exposure of sensitive financial data of the taxpaying population of the country. To top things off, these are only the cases that we're aware of, which begs the question of how many security breaches have gone unnoticed, or unannounced. What about companies like Google? As they expand their service offerings with GMail and Google Search History, where they are increasingly responsible for retaining client data, will they become a bigger target for attackers? This is the problem. What is the solution? Are there any tips for people to help protect their identity and confidential financial information? What firms go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that their client data is secure?"

michaelMSFT writes "Cooltechzone has a column stating that Intel has already lost the dual-core war against AMD. From the article: 'From the performance numbers published on numerous online publications, Intel has lost the Dual-Core War. The only competing factor that Intel has right now is the possibility to keep their prices low enough to attract those with strict budget...I would like to forward a special note to Intel: Please make sure your next generation of processors aren't as atrocious as the Prescott, as AMD is making you look pretty silly right now.'"

Content based image retrieval (CBIR), the technique to search for images not by keywords, but by comparing features of the images themselves has been the focus of much research ever since the web emerged. Consider for instance adding CBIR to Google Images, where you would be able to search for images similar to a query image instead of using keywords. A research project at Penn State University has recently been applied to the biggest aviation photo database in the world with close to 800,000 images. You can search for images similar to a photo already in their database (click "View similar photos") or submit your own query image. Some queries generate better results than others but CBIR is certainly here to stay and will be standard in many image applications of the future.

Lukey Boy writes "Google has released a free web accelerator product for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. According to their information page the software uses Google servers as a proxy for web content, delivering the pages to your system more rapidly and compressing them beforehand."

Lukey Boy writes "Google has released a free web accelerator product for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. According to their information page the software uses Google servers as a proxy for web content, delivering the pages to your system more rapidly and compressing them beforehand."

Soko writes "Yes, it's real. The crack team of Daniel Wallace and Maureen O'Gara have ganged up once again to protect their version of "The American Dream," he by filing a lawsuit in Indiana court saying the GPL is nothing more than a price fixing scheme designed to drive software vendors out of business, she by parroting the proprietary vendors' "The GPL kills business" mantra (as well as a few well placed insults at the free software community). I found the story on Groklaw - no links to Ms. O'Gara or Mr. Wallace from me. I'm still kind of dumbfounded at the audacity of Mr. Wallace, but wonder if he has an angle that might have a slim chance of prevailing." This Google search reveals some of Daniel Wallace's views on the GPL.

Meostro asks: "I've run several distributed computing clients in the past, and it felt nice to contribute to these projects that are saving the world. I recently became the admin of my company's branch datacenter, so my access to computing power has gone from 4 assorted boxes up to 20 servers and around 400 desktops. My ambition has grown by equal bounds, so I want to do some distributed processing on at least a few of these. We do food warehousing and distribution, so there's no protein folding, DSP or weather modelling work that would significantly contribute to our business. I've done some simple work with optimizing routes for our trucks, but our business doesn't seem to present many other problems that require lots of processing. What are some good business-specific tasks you have used distributed or grid computing to work through?"

headisdead writes "A week after Google substantially improved their UK site, Deutsche-Welle carry the story that the a whole host of large European libraries (with the British Library's tacit support) have joined an EU-based digitisation project as a counter to Google's own library scheme. The project is the brainchild of BNF director Jean-Noel Jeanneney, a sort of mild-mannered Jose Bove for the librarians out there. Divisive pride, or healthy competition?"

notmartinfrobisher writes "Around Guardian Mobility offices we have been excited to support an exploratory ski trip across Greenland. Anne Marte Pensgaard is skiing across Greenland with only a friend and some husky dogs for company. She has been outfitted with one of our Tracer units which has a GPS receiver and send data to our backoffice through Globalstars Low-earth orbit satellite network. We're tracking her progress using Google Maps and using MyGMaps. to map multiple points onto Google Map's satellite imagery. When asked about her trip Anne Marte wrote: "Our expedition consist of two phases. This year we (Marit and myself and 12 greenland huskies) are going to find a passage into the inland ice (the icecap itself) where we will be able to bring all the dogs and our sledges up on the ice. We will start in Ilulissat on the west coast and then travel north.(around 70degrees N) How far north we will go this year depends on the conditions. Our main expedition will be a more than 1000 km trip from Ilulissat to Qaanaq (Thule Air Base) in the north, either in 2006 or in 2007." We provided her with a Tracer unit set up to wake up every 30 minutes but to transmit only when she has moved at least 200m, this way she won't have to worry about turning off the unit when she's camping at night. We'll be updating you on this exciting trip by posting maps of her current location every couple of days. Maps and satellite imagery are courtesy Google Maps."

the.admin.man writes "There's been quite a bit of buzz around using PHP as a backend to AJAX-based web applications (the same development methodology on which some Google applications), lately, particularly after the release of JPSpan, a framework that helps building XML-based interfaces between Javascript and PHP apps. Just yesterday, Joshua Eichorn gave a presentation to the Arizona PHP Group on developing AJAX applications for PHP--he's posted the slides online, and will give his presentation again through a free webcast hosted by php|architect."

the.admin.man writes "There's been quite a bit of buzz around using PHP as a backend to AJAX-based web applications (the same development methodology on which some Google applications), lately, particularly after the release of JPSpan, a framework that helps building XML-based interfaces between Javascript and PHP apps. Just yesterday, Joshua Eichorn gave a presentation to the Arizona PHP Group on developing AJAX applications for PHP--he's posted the slides online, and will give his presentation again through a free webcast hosted by php|architect."

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "Dr. Mark Roth at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has successfully induced a state of reversible metabolic hibernation in mice which (no surprise) is getting quite a bit of publicity. Attempts in the past have used cooling techniques, but Dr. Roth uses hydrogen sulfide (80 parts/million) to basically put the warm-blooded mice into an advanced hibernated state, with a drop from the normal 120 breaths/minute to less than 10. Core body temperature also drops as low as 11C (50F) to match the ambient room temperature. The mice recover in about two hours once normal air/temperatures are applied, with no apparent ill effects - apparently there is a mice IQ/motor-skills test. In addition to the obligatory reference to Woody Allen's Sleeper movie, this has applicability for emergency rooms as it would be beneficial to in ER medicine as a way of "buying time" while diagnosis is performed."

Philipp Lenssen writes "Google has released My Search History (Beta). Login with your Google account (like your Gmail account), and a search history feature will be integrated right into the Google.com homepage. You can then retrieve pages you've previously found by either clicking on calendar dates, or by performing a full-text search. Other features are available as well."

Koushiro writes "From Google's official blog comes word that Google Maps UK and Google Local UK have been launched, confirming speculations that the search engine giant would continue to expand its regional services to an international audience. The seemingly logical next step, of course, would be to expand coverage to Western Europe, but given the input Google's UK office had into this project, can we expect Google Maps India next?"

Rollie Hawk writes "As is the case with any pay-per-click (PPC) advertising service, Google AdSense is vulnerable to click inflation, where the per-click values of ads go down thanks to excessive clicking. What is different this time is that it is not greedy webmasters clicking ads on their own site but rather the advertisers themselves. In a lawsuit filed last year, Google alleges that Auctions Expert used hired hands and automation to generate high numbers of ad clicks that resulted in $50,000 in revenues. This was done with two goals in mind: forcing wasted advertising expenses on competitors and inflating their own click values, lowering advertising costs. Industry insiders claim that Google AdSense and other PPC advertising providers are undermanned and therefore don't catch many of the estimated 20% fraudulent clicks. It certainly seems that some heuristic software could help reign-in some of these activities, yet Google seems to do a large amount of this work by hand. Often criticized for its policies of non-disclosure for many of its online services, Google claims the secrecy is justified in the case of not giving advertisers details on fraudulent clicking. They say the last thing they want to do is provide a 'road map' to would-be frauders."

Dram writes "Business Week, among others, is reporting that GameStop will buy Electronics Boutique for $1.4 billion. Hopefully this will allow both chains to better compete with Wal-Mart and Best Buy for our gaming dollars."

A Dafa Disciple writes "Fred Langa of Information Week has written an article claiming to discuss the 'Pros and Cons of Firefox'. At first I was excited because I thought I was going to get to finally read an enlightening, in-depth article that critically examined the browser. I should have known better. Aside from the usual criticism of open source software, it contains a reference to a Symantec Internet Security Report which claims that more security vulnerabilities in the last six months of 2004 were found in Firefox than IE. I'll leave it to you to analyze Mr. Langa's opinion and scrutinize Symantec's study and reputation as a security software developer."

GoatJuggler writes "I accidentally visited google.org recently and ended up at a different Google site that appears to be a placeholder for Google's future foray into the world of philanthropy. A quote from Sergey Brin & Larry Page is there now, 'We hope that someday this institution will eclipse Google itself in overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems.' Not much to see there now, but it's certainly refreshing to see a successful company leveraging their success to do good. Googling part of that quote led me to a blog that references the uniqueness of Google's SEC filing. The Google Foundation is referenced, and Google's job page now mentions that they are looking to fill the position of Executive Director for the Google Foundation. So, expect Good Things(TM) (like saving 3-legged kittens) from Google soon."

fizz writes "Well, Google has done it again. This time, simply enter any tracking number or id number into the Google search box, and Voila! You have a link to the shipper and tracking information. They have a funny little mom/son tech talk bit on the blog about this."

fizz writes "Well, Google has done it again. This time, simply enter any tracking number or id number into the Google search box, and Voila! You have a link to the shipper and tracking information. They have a funny little mom/son tech talk bit on the blog about this."

Eric writes "According to BetaNews, 'Google is preparing a video distribution platform that provides a complete ecosystem of services for content producers, publishers and end-users.' The first phase of its video upload program rolled out today, and 'content owners will be able to control distribution rights themselves, even setting a price for their video clips. Eventually, users will be able to search, preview, purchase and play videos directly from within Google.'"

danila (Danila Medvedev) writes "'Gnothi seauton' was the precept inscribed in gold letter upon the temple of the Oracle of Delphi. The authorship of this famous maxim was ascribed to every great Greek philosopher, from Pythagoras to Socrates. According to Juvenal, this precept descended from heaven. It is immensely strange, then, that most people, including you, my dear reader, never really make the effort to 'know thyself.' The number of misconceptions, superstitions and myths that we spread about ourselves is indeed astonishing. Fortunately for you, someone else has already taken the time to understand you and present the results in entertaining, easily digestible, but at the same time scientifically rigorous format. Let me introduce Mapping the Mind by Rita Carter, an illustrated user manual to the software that runs inside our skulls -- the human mind." Read on for the rest of Medvedev's review. Mapping the Mind author Rita Carter, Christopher Frith pages 224 publisher University of California Press rating 10 reviewer Danila Medvedev ISBN 0520224612 summary Extensive illustrations drawing on the lastest in brain imaging techniques, along with expert text, makes this book especially imformative and a wonderful companion to other titles in neuroscience.

Rita Carter is a British medical writer. She was twice awarded the Medical Journalists' Association prize for outstanding contribution to medical journalism. The book gives a comprehensive description of our knowledge about the brain (as of 1998, when the book was written). It covers popular topics, such as the causes for optical illusions, the nature of the Mona Lisa's smile, the differences between the left and the right brain, between males and females, the mechanisms of drug addictions. It also delves into less popular subjects, such as the need for rationalization, the mechanisms of speech and reading, the "programmability" of patients with a lobotomy, the causes of face-blindness and many others. In fact, after finishing the book I can hardly name any aspect of the mind that the book didn't tell me about.

Throughout the book, Carter's descriptions invariably remain strict, rigorous and factual. The book doesn't make any empty claims about our minds, nor does it delve into controversies perpetrated by the uninformed. Everything written is always based on pure hard science, with references aplenty.

This doesn't prevent the book from being easy to read and immensely entertaining. Imagine the weirdness of thousands of clinical histories condensed into 330 pages for our education. The simplest way to understand the function of some part of the brain is to find a person in whom it is damaged. Here you have it all: A man who believed that copulating with the pavement was normal; the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat; Vladimir Nabokov and his account of synaesthesia; people with Fregoli's syndrome (who constantly mistake strangers for people they know, even though they realize they look totally different); chickens excited by Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut"; Nadean Cool, her false memories of baby-eating Satanic cults and her 120 different personalities, including a duck; and people with anosognosia, who refuse to realize their illnesses, such as blindness or paralysis. And what's even better, you will be able to find explanations for your own quirks and deficiencies. There are bugs in every program; your mind is no exception. It is an amazing feeling to be able to realize how your mind works, what makes you tick, what constitutes "you" -- why you feel, think and act the way you do.

The book is a treat for the eyes: the huge number of helpful, pretty illustrations makes it both easier to comprehend it and more pleasant to read. The numerous diagrams and brain scans illustrate every subject, showing which areas become more active when you have depression, which areas cause OCD (caudate), what causes eating disorders (faults in hypothalamus), the pathways activated during face recognition, etc. This helps dispel the illusion of our brain being an incomprehensible black box, letting you get a grip on the physical basis for thoughts. It's like ignoring the EULAs and looking at the source code for your mind for the first time.

The book consists of eight chapters. It begins with an introduction to the brain structure in "The Emerging Landscape," starting with an overview of the misconceptions of phrenology, and ending with a short comment by a neurophysiologist Horace Barlow, who explains the usefulness of a reductionist approach as a first step to studying the brain. The section covers all brain modules, the neural pathways and explains the evolution of the brain.

After we are through the basics, our journey around the brain starts. First, in the "The Great Divide," Carter explains the roles of the left and the right hemispheres and the corpus calossum -- the connection between them. Among other things Carter explains the alien hand phenomena, describes experiments that demonstrate that people whose corpus calossum have been severed exhibit two separate personalities, and touches the puzzle of left-handedness.

After that, we delve deep into the brain, into its more primitive part, the limbic system, which is responsible for our emotions. Then we are shown the nature of perceptions and how they achieve their meanings. After that the author breaks from the confines of the brain and explains the social nature of humans, and how language enables most of our social interactions.

Then Carter describes the nature of our memories. She explains amnesia and Alzheimer's disease, explains the amount of memory we have, and where different memories (such as procedural memory, fearful experiences, or normal memories) are stored. She describes H.M., a patient with most of the hippocampus and amygdala removed. His mind had no continuity at all; H.M. lost the ability to form most types of new memories, but he could form procedural memories and could learn some new music to play on the piano. Another man, after having a minor stroke in the middle of a family dinner, suddenly found that he didn't remember where he was, and no longer recognized the people at the table. He didn't do anything, though, and later told the doctor: "I felt quite happy being with them even though I didn't know who they were," and "they seemed rather an agreeable lot." We are shown why false memories are the norm, rather than an anomaly.

Finally, our most unique and advanced feature -- consciousness -- is explained. Carter describes the "working memory" model developed by Alan Baddeley, where images and speech-based information is held for short time in a cache-like space, while the "central executive" part co-ordinates the information processing. She demonstrates how complex programs can be easily triggered in patients with lobotomy. French neurologist Francois L'Hermitte once invited two of his patients, a man and a woman, to his home. He ushered the man into a bedroom without explanation. In the middle of the day the man saw the ready-to-use bed and immediately undressed, preparing to go to sleep. When a woman was let in and saw the rumpled bed, she immediately started to make it. Carter explains the illusion of the free will and its evolutionary origins.

She ends the book with the optimistic conclusion: "I believe one thing is already clear: there is no ghost in this place, no monsters in the depths, no lands ruled by dragons. What today's mind voyagers are discovering is instead a biological system of awe-inspiring complexity. There is no need for us to satisfy our sense of wonder by conjuring phantoms -- the world within our heads is more marvelous than anything we can dream up."

What does this book leaves the reader afterwards? It left me with the insatiable desire to immediately read it again, this time with a notebook and a pencil at hand, so that I do not miss a single fact, a single lesson, a single bit of truth about who I am. To me the book was perfect -- a unique combination of scientific rigor and entertaining writing. Each amusing medical account was always accompanied with a detailed explanation of the physiological basis for it and a handy illustration. It was complete, well-structured and accessible.

I think it was the best book (fiction or non-fiction) that I read in the past year. The only other book that approached it was another take on the nature of the mind - the amusing Permutation City by Greg Egan, which takes the technologically feasible idea of mind uploading and pushes it to its limits, exploring the philosophical and mathematical consequences along the way.

You can browse the book at Google Print. Please do so and then read it in full. Learning about yourself should be the top thing on your agenda, if you consider yourself an intelligent creature. And for a computer scientist or a programmer there can hardly be a more interesting subject than the most complex software application, written over the millions of years, an amalgamation of legacy features, sloppy code, perfectly optimized routines, special cases and the ever-harmful neural goto operators. "Gnothi seauton," and have fun doing it.

You can purchase Mapping the Mind from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

bigtallmofo writes "Google has added a mobile version of their local-search service to their lineup of mobile applications available from devices equipped with XHTML-enabled browsers. Previously available mobile Google applications include their mobile web and image search and their SMS service (beta) that allows users to enter their search queries and receive results via a text message. The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer."

bigtallmofo writes "Google has added a mobile version of their local-search service to their lineup of mobile applications available from devices equipped with XHTML-enabled browsers. Previously available mobile Google applications include their mobile web and image search and their SMS service (beta) that allows users to enter their search queries and receive results via a text message. The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer."

bigtallmofo writes "Google has added a mobile version of their local-search service to their lineup of mobile applications available from devices equipped with XHTML-enabled browsers. Previously available mobile Google applications include their mobile web and image search and their SMS service (beta) that allows users to enter their search queries and receive results via a text message. The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer."

bigtallmofo writes "Google has added a mobile version of their local-search service to their lineup of mobile applications available from devices equipped with XHTML-enabled browsers. Previously available mobile Google applications include their mobile web and image search and their SMS service (beta) that allows users to enter their search queries and receive results via a text message. The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer."

CousinLarry writes "A neat project called Buzztracker.org has been mining Google News for over a year and keeping track of relationships between geographic locations mentioned in articles. The results are some really cool maps that actually seem to reflect the "buzz" of the day - check out the Vatican clusters from earlier this month, or the global New Year's chatter. You can also dig down into the articles from which the maps were generated."

Corey Nachreiner writes "Until recently, I considered myself a Google power-user; so much so that I often call Google my "second brain." Whenever I stumble upon a computing dilemma I can't solve, I submit an advanced query to my second brain, Google, and let it supply the answers. That's why I was So There when Johnny Long released his recent book, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers . I heard Johnny's lively, light-hearted presentation to a packed house at the BlackHat Briefings last summer in Las Vegas. It was the hit of the show, but in one hour he could only present a few of his startling findings about Google hacking. After reading Johnny's book, I've learned a ton more and realized I wasn't quite as Google-savvy as I thought. As with my real brain, I've only been using about ten percent of my Google-brain's capacity." Read on for the rest of Nachreiner's review. Google Hacking for Penetration Testers author Johnny Long pages 448 publisher Syngress rating 8 reviewer Corey Nachreiner ISBN 1931836361 summary Google's dark and dork sides exposed; despite the title, useful for everyone who'd like to get the most out of google.

According to its cover, Johnny Long's book focuses primarily on revealing the "Dark Side" of Google -- a promise it delivers in spades. But I can also heartily recommend Google Hacking to newbies who simply want to learn how to harness Google's full potential.

The first few chapters of the book walk you through Google's interfaces and features, then introduce you to Google's advanced operators and techniques you can use to refine your Google searches. Instead of submitting basic searches that leave you arduously parsing hundreds of results for your desired answer, you quickly learn to submit powerful queries that almost instantly yield the results you intend. Even as an experienced Google user, I learned a lot from Google Hacking's early chapters. For Google neophytes, this alone makes the book worth its price.

However, we all know Slashdotters really want this book in order to learn how hackers misuse Google. Well, you won't be disappointed. As soon as Long has taught you to submit advanced queries, he wastes no time in showing you the techniques l33t Google hax0rs use to exploit the search engine's power. For example, did you know you can use Google as a free proxy server? By submitting a specially-crafted, English-to-English translation query, you can capitalize on Google's translation service to anonymously submit all your Web requests. This simple hack just scratches the surface of Google's malicious potential.

Most Web surfers don't realize the sheer amount of extremely sensitive information available for the harvesting on the Internet. In that sense, Google Hacking is eye-popping. Do you want to find misconfigured Web servers that publicly list their directory contents? A quick Google search does the trick. Or, suppose you found some new exploit code that only works against a particular version of IIS 5.0. Submit a quick Google query for a helpful list of possible targets. Do you want to harvest user logins, passwords (for example, mySQL passwords in a connect.inc file), credit card numbers, social security numbers or any other potentially damaging tidbit that Web users and administrators accidentally leak onto the Internet? Google Hacking shows you how, with highly refined searches gleaned from the community contributing to the Google Hacking database (GHDB) found on Long's Web site.

While Long's book discloses these and many other potentially malicious Google searching techniques, it does so responsibly, with the goal of prevention in mind. Only the less damaging search strings are fully revealed. Long saves the juicier (read: more dangerous) hacks for your own discovery. Long even obfuscates the sensitive results of the more damaging search strings in order to protect the innocent incompetents he refers to as "googledorks." After showing you how hackers subvert Google to their malicious intent, Long dedicates a chapter to how Web administrators can configure their Web servers securely in order to prevent sensitive data from making it into a Google Hacker's clutches.

Though I've gushed about the book so far, I will quibble with its inconsistent tone. Some of its chapters target readers having different levels of technical understanding. While the book starts out in a voice easy enough for even the most novice user to understand, some of the later chapters, on topics such as document grinding, database digging, and query automation, jump drastically and use language and techniques that only programmers or Unix power-users would understand. In addition, the humor that made Johnny's live presentation so memorable shows up in his book, but in scant supply; frankly, more jokes would be welcome.

But these negatives are mere nits. Whether you're a penetration tester wanting to exploit Google, a Web administrator wanting to protect yourself from information leaks, or even a newbie wanting to harness Google's full potential, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers makes an excellent resource. If you, too, use Google as a second brain, pick up Johnny Long's book and learn how to exploit this powerful search engine to its full capacity.

Corey Nachreiner, Network Security Analyst for WatchGuard's LiveSecurity Service, writes about network security on the free RSS news feed, WatchGuard Wire (browsable version, RSS feed.) You can purchase Google Hacking for Penetration Testers from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Corey Nachreiner writes "Until recently, I considered myself a Google power-user; so much so that I often call Google my "second brain." Whenever I stumble upon a computing dilemma I can't solve, I submit an advanced query to my second brain, Google, and let it supply the answers. That's why I was So There when Johnny Long released his recent book, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers . I heard Johnny's lively, light-hearted presentation to a packed house at the BlackHat Briefings last summer in Las Vegas. It was the hit of the show, but in one hour he could only present a few of his startling findings about Google hacking. After reading Johnny's book, I've learned a ton more and realized I wasn't quite as Google-savvy as I thought. As with my real brain, I've only been using about ten percent of my Google-brain's capacity." Read on for the rest of Nachreiner's review. Google Hacking for Penetration Testers author Johnny Long pages 448 publisher Syngress rating 8 reviewer Corey Nachreiner ISBN 1931836361 summary Google's dark and dork sides exposed; despite the title, useful for everyone who'd like to get the most out of google.

According to its cover, Johnny Long's book focuses primarily on revealing the "Dark Side" of Google -- a promise it delivers in spades. But I can also heartily recommend Google Hacking to newbies who simply want to learn how to harness Google's full potential.

The first few chapters of the book walk you through Google's interfaces and features, then introduce you to Google's advanced operators and techniques you can use to refine your Google searches. Instead of submitting basic searches that leave you arduously parsing hundreds of results for your desired answer, you quickly learn to submit powerful queries that almost instantly yield the results you intend. Even as an experienced Google user, I learned a lot from Google Hacking's early chapters. For Google neophytes, this alone makes the book worth its price.

However, we all know Slashdotters really want this book in order to learn how hackers misuse Google. Well, you won't be disappointed. As soon as Long has taught you to submit advanced queries, he wastes no time in showing you the techniques l33t Google hax0rs use to exploit the search engine's power. For example, did you know you can use Google as a free proxy server? By submitting a specially-crafted, English-to-English translation query, you can capitalize on Google's translation service to anonymously submit all your Web requests. This simple hack just scratches the surface of Google's malicious potential.

Most Web surfers don't realize the sheer amount of extremely sensitive information available for the harvesting on the Internet. In that sense, Google Hacking is eye-popping. Do you want to find misconfigured Web servers that publicly list their directory contents? A quick Google search does the trick. Or, suppose you found some new exploit code that only works against a particular version of IIS 5.0. Submit a quick Google query for a helpful list of possible targets. Do you want to harvest user logins, passwords (for example, mySQL passwords in a connect.inc file), credit card numbers, social security numbers or any other potentially damaging tidbit that Web users and administrators accidentally leak onto the Internet? Google Hacking shows you how, with highly refined searches gleaned from the community contributing to the Google Hacking database (GHDB) found on Long's Web site.

While Long's book discloses these and many other potentially malicious Google searching techniques, it does so responsibly, with the goal of prevention in mind. Only the less damaging search strings are fully revealed. Long saves the juicier (read: more dangerous) hacks for your own discovery. Long even obfuscates the sensitive results of the more damaging search strings in order to protect the innocent incompetents he refers to as "googledorks." After showing you how hackers subvert Google to their malicious intent, Long dedicates a chapter to how Web administrators can configure their Web servers securely in order to prevent sensitive data from making it into a Google Hacker's clutches.

Though I've gushed about the book so far, I will quibble with its inconsistent tone. Some of its chapters target readers having different levels of technical understanding. While the book starts out in a voice easy enough for even the most novice user to understand, some of the later chapters, on topics such as document grinding, database digging, and query automation, jump drastically and use language and techniques that only programmers or Unix power-users would understand. In addition, the humor that made Johnny's live presentation so memorable shows up in his book, but in scant supply; frankly, more jokes would be welcome.

But these negatives are mere nits. Whether you're a penetration tester wanting to exploit Google, a Web administrator wanting to protect yourself from information leaks, or even a newbie wanting to harness Google's full potential, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers makes an excellent resource. If you, too, use Google as a second brain, pick up Johnny Long's book and learn how to exploit this powerful search engine to its full capacity.

Corey Nachreiner, Network Security Analyst for WatchGuard's LiveSecurity Service, writes about network security on the free RSS news feed, WatchGuard Wire (browsable version, RSS feed.) You can purchase Google Hacking for Penetration Testers from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Corey Nachreiner writes "Until recently, I considered myself a Google power-user; so much so that I often call Google my "second brain." Whenever I stumble upon a computing dilemma I can't solve, I submit an advanced query to my second brain, Google, and let it supply the answers. That's why I was So There when Johnny Long released his recent book, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers . I heard Johnny's lively, light-hearted presentation to a packed house at the BlackHat Briefings last summer in Las Vegas. It was the hit of the show, but in one hour he could only present a few of his startling findings about Google hacking. After reading Johnny's book, I've learned a ton more and realized I wasn't quite as Google-savvy as I thought. As with my real brain, I've only been using about ten percent of my Google-brain's capacity." Read on for the rest of Nachreiner's review. Google Hacking for Penetration Testers author Johnny Long pages 448 publisher Syngress rating 8 reviewer Corey Nachreiner ISBN 1931836361 summary Google's dark and dork sides exposed; despite the title, useful for everyone who'd like to get the most out of google.

According to its cover, Johnny Long's book focuses primarily on revealing the "Dark Side" of Google -- a promise it delivers in spades. But I can also heartily recommend Google Hacking to newbies who simply want to learn how to harness Google's full potential.

The first few chapters of the book walk you through Google's interfaces and features, then introduce you to Google's advanced operators and techniques you can use to refine your Google searches. Instead of submitting basic searches that leave you arduously parsing hundreds of results for your desired answer, you quickly learn to submit powerful queries that almost instantly yield the results you intend. Even as an experienced Google user, I learned a lot from Google Hacking's early chapters. For Google neophytes, this alone makes the book worth its price.

However, we all know Slashdotters really want this book in order to learn how hackers misuse Google. Well, you won't be disappointed. As soon as Long has taught you to submit advanced queries, he wastes no time in showing you the techniques l33t Google hax0rs use to exploit the search engine's power. For example, did you know you can use Google as a free proxy server? By submitting a specially-crafted, English-to-English translation query, you can capitalize on Google's translation service to anonymously submit all your Web requests. This simple hack just scratches the surface of Google's malicious potential.

Most Web surfers don't realize the sheer amount of extremely sensitive information available for the harvesting on the Internet. In that sense, Google Hacking is eye-popping. Do you want to find misconfigured Web servers that publicly list their directory contents? A quick Google search does the trick. Or, suppose you found some new exploit code that only works against a particular version of IIS 5.0. Submit a quick Google query for a helpful list of possible targets. Do you want to harvest user logins, passwords (for example, mySQL passwords in a connect.inc file), credit card numbers, social security numbers or any other potentially damaging tidbit that Web users and administrators accidentally leak onto the Internet? Google Hacking shows you how, with highly refined searches gleaned from the community contributing to the Google Hacking database (GHDB) found on Long's Web site.

While Long's book discloses these and many other potentially malicious Google searching techniques, it does so responsibly, with the goal of prevention in mind. Only the less damaging search strings are fully revealed. Long saves the juicier (read: more dangerous) hacks for your own discovery. Long even obfuscates the sensitive results of the more damaging search strings in order to protect the innocent incompetents he refers to as "googledorks." After showing you how hackers subvert Google to their malicious intent, Long dedicates a chapter to how Web administrators can configure their Web servers securely in order to prevent sensitive data from making it into a Google Hacker's clutches.

Though I've gushed about the book so far, I will quibble with its inconsistent tone. Some of its chapters target readers having different levels of technical understanding. While the book starts out in a voice easy enough for even the most novice user to understand, some of the later chapters, on topics such as document grinding, database digging, and query automation, jump drastically and use language and techniques that only programmers or Unix power-users would understand. In addition, the humor that made Johnny's live presentation so memorable shows up in his book, but in scant supply; frankly, more jokes would be welcome.

But these negatives are mere nits. Whether you're a penetration tester wanting to exploit Google, a Web administrator wanting to protect yourself from information leaks, or even a newbie wanting to harness Google's full potential, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers makes an excellent resource. If you, too, use Google as a second brain, pick up Johnny Long's book and learn how to exploit this powerful search engine to its full capacity.

Corey Nachreiner, Network Security Analyst for WatchGuard's LiveSecurity Service, writes about network security on the free RSS news feed, WatchGuard Wire (browsable version, RSS feed.) You can purchase Google Hacking for Penetration Testers from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Corey Nachreiner writes "Until recently, I considered myself a Google power-user; so much so that I often call Google my "second brain." Whenever I stumble upon a computing dilemma I can't solve, I submit an advanced query to my second brain, Google, and let it supply the answers. That's why I was So There when Johnny Long released his recent book, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers . I heard Johnny's lively, light-hearted presentation to a packed house at the BlackHat Briefings last summer in Las Vegas. It was the hit of the show, but in one hour he could only present a few of his startling findings about Google hacking. After reading Johnny's book, I've learned a ton more and realized I wasn't quite as Google-savvy as I thought. As with my real brain, I've only been using about ten percent of my Google-brain's capacity." Read on for the rest of Nachreiner's review. Google Hacking for Penetration Testers author Johnny Long pages 448 publisher Syngress rating 8 reviewer Corey Nachreiner ISBN 1931836361 summary Google's dark and dork sides exposed; despite the title, useful for everyone who'd like to get the most out of google.

According to its cover, Johnny Long's book focuses primarily on revealing the "Dark Side" of Google -- a promise it delivers in spades. But I can also heartily recommend Google Hacking to newbies who simply want to learn how to harness Google's full potential.

The first few chapters of the book walk you through Google's interfaces and features, then introduce you to Google's advanced operators and techniques you can use to refine your Google searches. Instead of submitting basic searches that leave you arduously parsing hundreds of results for your desired answer, you quickly learn to submit powerful queries that almost instantly yield the results you intend. Even as an experienced Google user, I learned a lot from Google Hacking's early chapters. For Google neophytes, this alone makes the book worth its price.

However, we all know Slashdotters really want this book in order to learn how hackers misuse Google. Well, you won't be disappointed. As soon as Long has taught you to submit advanced queries, he wastes no time in showing you the techniques l33t Google hax0rs use to exploit the search engine's power. For example, did you know you can use Google as a free proxy server? By submitting a specially-crafted, English-to-English translation query, you can capitalize on Google's translation service to anonymously submit all your Web requests. This simple hack just scratches the surface of Google's malicious potential.

Most Web surfers don't realize the sheer amount of extremely sensitive information available for the harvesting on the Internet. In that sense, Google Hacking is eye-popping. Do you want to find misconfigured Web servers that publicly list their directory contents? A quick Google search does the trick. Or, suppose you found some new exploit code that only works against a particular version of IIS 5.0. Submit a quick Google query for a helpful list of possible targets. Do you want to harvest user logins, passwords (for example, mySQL passwords in a connect.inc file), credit card numbers, social security numbers or any other potentially damaging tidbit that Web users and administrators accidentally leak onto the Internet? Google Hacking shows you how, with highly refined searches gleaned from the community contributing to the Google Hacking database (GHDB) found on Long's Web site.

While Long's book discloses these and many other potentially malicious Google searching techniques, it does so responsibly, with the goal of prevention in mind. Only the less damaging search strings are fully revealed. Long saves the juicier (read: more dangerous) hacks for your own discovery. Long even obfuscates the sensitive results of the more damaging search strings in order to protect the innocent incompetents he refers to as "googledorks." After showing you how hackers subvert Google to their malicious intent, Long dedicates a chapter to how Web administrators can configure their Web servers securely in order to prevent sensitive data from making it into a Google Hacker's clutches.

Though I've gushed about the book so far, I will quibble with its inconsistent tone. Some of its chapters target readers having different levels of technical understanding. While the book starts out in a voice easy enough for even the most novice user to understand, some of the later chapters, on topics such as document grinding, database digging, and query automation, jump drastically and use language and techniques that only programmers or Unix power-users would understand. In addition, the humor that made Johnny's live presentation so memorable shows up in his book, but in scant supply; frankly, more jokes would be welcome.

But these negatives are mere nits. Whether you're a penetration tester wanting to exploit Google, a Web administrator wanting to protect yourself from information leaks, or even a newbie wanting to harness Google's full potential, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers makes an excellent resource. If you, too, use Google as a second brain, pick up Johnny Long's book and learn how to exploit this powerful search engine to its full capacity.

Corey Nachreiner, Network Security Analyst for WatchGuard's LiveSecurity Service, writes about network security on the free RSS news feed, WatchGuard Wire (browsable version, RSS feed.) You can purchase Google Hacking for Penetration Testers from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Jamesday writes "Yahoo! Search will also be providing support for Wikipedia. Discussions, started at the same time as the aforementioned Google announcement, have been ongoing with both Yahoo! and Google but only the Google news leaked. It's now more clear why Wikipedia said there was no need to worry about undue influence from any single sponsor."

Pankaj Arora writes "To those in the South Pacific (USA) and certain parts of the Americas, Friday, April 8th marks the day of the first solar eclipse of 2005. From the article: "It will be a partial eclipse rather than a total one, in which the Earth is cast into darkness. But it will be the last partial solar eclipse visible from the continental United States until May 20, 2012." Also, see other related stories."

Ant writes "BetaNews reports that Google quietly updated its maps service late Monday to include satellite imagery, a first in the industry... Much of Google Maps remains the same - just with detailed pictures from high-tech satellites instead of standard map graphics. Maps can be dragged to view adjacent areas, which means users do not have click and wait for graphics to reload. Zooming is also instantaneous with the help of a slider placed atop the map." The resolution doesn't seem very high, but the integration is very seamless.

An anonymous reader asks: "Slashdot recently covered a story that DARPA would significantly cut CS research. When I was completing graduate work in AI, the 'baby bootstrap' was considered the holy grail of military applications. Simply put, the 'baby bootstrap' would empower a computing device to learn like a child with a very good memory. DARPA poured a small fortune into the research. No sensors, servos or video input - it only needed terminal I/O to be effective. Today the internet could provide a developmental database far beyond any testbed that we imagined, yet there has been no significant progress in over 30 years. MindPixels and Cycorp seem typical of poorly funded efforts headed in the wrong direction, and all we hear from DARPA is autonomous robots. NIST seems more interested in industrial applications. Even Google is remarkably void of anything about the 'baby bootstrap'. What went wrong? Has the military really given up on this concept, or has their research moved to other, more classified levels?"

nnet writes "The Toronto Sun is reporting that a U.S. blogger has been breaching a Canadian publication ban on AdScam. While The Sun hasn't given the URL for the blog itself, in fear of a contempt of court charge, this isn't the first time an American has breached a Canadian publication ban according to the article." The Sun story, though, does give a nice title for which to search, and this quickly yields the story in question.

RobotWisdom writes "The new New Yorker magazine has posted two long non-technical articles about the Chudnovsky brothers and their homebrew supercomputers. One is a 1992 article about how they calculated pi to over two billion decimal places using a $70,000 cluster with 16 nodes. The other is a brandnew piece about how they spent months creating a seamless multi-gigabyte image of a fifteenth century tapestry for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tapestries are essentially pixel-art on a non-rigid (cloth) matrix, so the manual labor of photographing it inch by inch had introduced many tiny deformations in the images, which they had to mathematically iron out. Old lo-res pix of the tapestries are on the Met's site, pix of the brothers are in the world brain."

asgeirn writes "From reliable sources, I've been informed that Yahoo! and Google will announce a merger later this day. "-The new service, named YaGoohoo!gle, will give great synergies in search results and customer value," says an unnamed representative from one of the companies. It has yet to be decided where the new company's headquarters will reside."